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Epic Narrator: Madeline Miller on The Song of Achilles

One of 2012’s most exciting debuts is **Madeline Miller’**s Song of Achilles, a prequel of sorts to The Iliad that traces the rise and fall of the Greek golden boy of myth. A young classics scholar who specialized in adapting classical tales for a modern audience at the Yale School of Drama, Miller has penned a seductive, hugely entertaining backstory that lends complexity to Homer’s virile action-adventure by imagining the intimate friendship between Achilles and the devoted Patroclus, who meets his end fighting in the Trojan War on Achilles’s behalf. Scouring ancient Greek texts for every mention of Patroclus, Miller conjures a lonely child whose sympathetic vulnerability becomes the foundation of the bond. The boys grow up together, becoming not simply companions but soulmates. The resulting novel is cinematic—one might say epic—in scope, but refreshingly, compellingly human in detail. Vogue chatted with Miller via e-mail.

When did you first read The Iliad?

I first encountered The Iliad as a child, when my mother read it to me at bedtime. From the beginning, I was lovestruck—there was something about its heroes and gods that felt so intensely immediate, real, and exciting. I think it was partially that they were so full of faults. These were real people, not idealized ciphers. It felt like I was being let in on a secret, adult world. And I loved the adventures as well.

My senior year of college I directed a production of Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare’s version of The Iliad. It was an absolutely incredible and exciting experience getting to tell these stories myself, and it made me want to do more of it. That summer I sat down in front of my computer, and Patroclus’s voice began pouring out.

How much of the novel comes from research, and how much did you invent?

All the major episodes in the story are from the mythological record, but the minor incidents, and the emotional arc of the story, are my own. I wanted to take Homer’s Iliad as my endpoint—this is what the two men become. The question that I asked myself is, how do they get there?

In terms of seeing the two men as lovers, that was actually a time-honored tradition that goes all the way back to Plato. It’s something that is still debated in the field, but that’s the beauty of myth; there’s no such thing as a definitive answer.

You’ve managed to take a superhero archetype, best known for his vulnerable heel, and make him knowable: a flesh-and-blood man. How did you get into character?

This is where my theater training really came in handy, because getting into character is exactly what it was. Fortunately, I found Patroclus a lovely person to spend such a long and intimate time with, and he certainly did surprise me from time to time! One of the things that I liked about Patroclus is that he’s simultaneously cautious and quite impulsive.

What do you see in the Greek myths that makes them relevant today?

The Greek myths are full of fantastical trappings, from thunderbolt-throwing divinities to centaurs, but at heart they are really about human nature, and human experience—our struggle to survive in a terrifying world. The issues they deal with—love, loss, ambition, family—are things that we can all identify with. It’s a cliché to call something timeless, but these stories truly are. Like all great art, they never go out of style.